Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, and a program and, more particularly, to a technique suitable for use in detection of a structure of an image.
Description of the Related Art
As a method of detecting structure information of an image from the image, there is a method whereby a feature extracting filter such as a VanderBrug filter or the like is used (VanderBrug, G. J, “Line Detection in Satellite Imagery”, Symposium on Machine Processing of Remotely sensed Data, Jun. 3-5, 1975, Page 2A-[16-20]). According to the method whereby the VanderBrug filter is used, an area of N pixels (in the vertical direction)×N pixels (in the horizontal direction) is divided into three areas and a plurality of filters having different patterns (filter patterns) as patterns of those three areas are prepared. The filter is set for the image so that a center pixel of the filter is located at a target pixel of the image. Such operations that an average value of pixel values of the image is calculated every area of the filter and an absolute value of a difference between the average values of the pixel values of the respective areas is calculated are executed with respect to each filter. By comparing the absolute values of the differences of the average values of the pixel values of the respective areas, structure information showing a structure (feature) of a peripheral region of the target pixel is detected.
However, according to the technique disclosed in “Line Detection in Satellite Imagery” mentioned above, a plurality of filters (a plurality of filter patterns) are applied to respective pixels as filters each having a size of (N pixels (in the vertical direction)×N pixels (in the horizontal direction)) and the pixel values have to be added every pixel. Therefore, there is such a problem that a calculation amount is large and it takes a time for processing.
The invention is made in consideration of such problems and it is an aspect of the invention that a time which is required to detect structure information of an image is shortened.